Load your script from whichever medium you are presented with and if possible go through it. If it hasn’t been already broken into sections break it up into sequences or even pages or use shot numbers to define particular sequences. You can certainly put these in during the stagger through, but usually you’d be too busy doing corrections. If you can do this it can save you a lot of time later. Don’t forget that you can use the “Find” option in most prompter software packages to jump to places in the script quickly.

If you get the chance read through the script on the preview monitor and check the formatting. Tidy it up as much as possible, the amount of work depends on the format of the imported text, it can be clean or it can be a nightmare. Things to watch out for are merged paragraphs which belong to different presenters, spelling, passages that don’t make sense, and the tricky catch lines. A catch line is where the short prompter line makes sense to the end of the line but in fact runs on into the next, as follows:

Rest assured we are
doing all we can to
change those multi
agency instructions – catch word move “to” back to same line as instructions
to sole agency – and
improve fee levels.
(CHART)
I know it’s frustrating
but I’d like to share
with you the example
of the Birmingham area – catch word – move area to line below….
that has sold 100% of
the multiagency
instructions given to
them by HouseHunt.

A simple thing like moving a word can make the world of difference to the presenter. Underlines and other punctuation are best done with the presenter as you go through the script.

Always back up as you go along and its a good idea to back up on a USB storage device as well as the hard drive so you can transfer the prepared script to another computer if needs be.